It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there's not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination.

The Art of Fiction, #69: Interview with Peter H. Stone (Issue 82, Winter 1981), The Paris Review Interviews: Writers at Work, Sixth Series (Viking/Penguin, 1984, ISBN 0-140-07736-7), p. 322.